Working on S5M4: Try, Try Again. Corwin and Utena may be the only couple anyone at this wedding have ever heard of who included a nap for everybody in the program of activities for the day.

Time

Activity

11:00 AM

Ceremony

11:30 AM - 1:30 PM

Lunch followed by Formal DancingMusic by the Tenjou Academy Student Orchestraunder the direction of Miss Heather McClellan

1:30 PM - 3:30 PM

Displays of Martial ProwessN.B. Very important not to typo this item on the handouts.Let's not give Nall any excuses we don't have to. -C

3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

Nap

5:00 PM - ?

Dinner followed by Informal DancingMusic by the Art of Noise feat.Baron Zoria and his Circle of Horns,MC Mordin,and The Port Jeradar Surphony OrchestraAnd probably everyone else within arm's reach who playsa musical instrument. You know Kate when she gets going. -C

Displays of Martial Prowess N.B. Very important not to typo this item on the handouts. Let's not give Nall any excuses we don't have to. -C

Especially since he kind of forgot the bachelor party and may seek to make up for lost time.

Although in my own minds eye, I see Nall deciding to seize the opportunity (and the captive, sleepy-from-lunch crowd) to explain every painstaking tier of draconic romance initiation rituals in the same style as Jake the Dog would:

"Then down the road you'll make it to Tier 5, where she'll let you discover all 200 feet of her beautiful, scaly stomach. And after awhile, you'll make it to Tier 8, where you touch her tail for the very first time. Very special. Yes, a question from Doctor Solus?"

>Although in my own minds eye, I see Nall deciding to seize the >opportunity (and the captive, sleepy-from-lunch crowd) to explain >every painstaking tier of draconic romance initiation rituals in the >same style as Jake the Dog would:

This is hilarious in its own right (though a bit out of keeping for the scene in question, I admit), but I think the best part of it is that Nall's girlfriend isn't a dragon, leaving her standing off to one side while he says all this wondering why he knows any of that. :)

>This looks hilarious. Do wish Anthy would join them, but she can have >her own ceremony, I guess--it's a bit weird she declined when her >whole plan is to get the three of them together. =)

Well, as Wakaba noted, this whole shindig is kind of for show. It's a political act that just also happens to be a nicely personal one.

Corwin and Utena are ALREADY married. Frigg took care of that. (I would be interested in seeing the precise legal wrangling to get this entire triangle legally recognized in Federation space, if it's possible at all, but I somehow doubt our host is interested in that.) This whole giant elaborate ceremony is for the benefit of the people of Cephiro. It's about their Pillar and their Prince. I doubt Anthy is ashamed of their unconventional three-way marriage, but her being up there would probably require them to create a whole new ceremony from scratch (you know a lot of marriage ceremonies that are easily adapted for more than two people at once? I don't, at least, not ones that aren't DEEPLY creepy) and have a lot of people going "Wait... what? Can they do that? Is it even legal?"

>>Corwin officiated Utena and Anthy's wedding. It might appeal to >>Anthy's sense of symmetry if she officiated Corwin and Utena's; that >>might also play well with the Cephireans.>>Mmm. She is the Priestess, after all...

Yes, under the circumstances it would strike many onlookers as deeply weird if she didn't participate in some capacity. Not that Anthy has ever necessarily been concerned about seeming weird, but as has been said, since this exercise is as much to reassure the Cephirean people as anything else, certain things need to be observed. Which is not to say that it's just for show, but that's an important part.

This doesn't bode well for Anthy's previously professed desire to spectate, but into each life a little rain... :)

In fact, depending on how you look at it, the universe took care of that. :)

>(I >would be interested in seeing the precise legal wrangling to get this >entire triangle legally recognized in Federation space, if it's >possible at all, but I somehow doubt our host is interested in that.)

Well, they haven't voided the reciprocality agreement with the Republic of Zeta Cygni yet, anyway...

>(you know a lot of marriage ceremonies that are easily adapted >for more than two people at once?

I was at a double wedding once, but that was just two couples getting married at the same time, not... you know, a fully meshed network. :)

>>(I >>would be interested in seeing the precise legal wrangling to get this >>entire triangle legally recognized in Federation space, if it's >>possible at all, but I somehow doubt our host is interested in that.)>>Well, they haven't voided the reciprocality agreement with the >Republic of Zeta Cygni yet, anyway...

Prompted by this, I actually went and started looking up caselaw and legislation, and it's really kind of super fascinating. There's a whole long, complex legal history of various polities trying to not piss each other off while also simultaneously not giving their imprimatur to people who go jurisdiction shopping in order to dodge local public policy. The US especially has had a hard time finding laws that (for example) require people to support whatever crazy families and children they might have established elsewhere, while NOT simultaneously acknowledging some assholes harem of 12-year old child brides as having any sort of legal status whatsoever if said asshole just happens to be in the US.

This has very, very little bearing on Symphony of the Sword, of course, but I do know what I'm gonna be reading about for the next couple days. It's an interesting legal black hole in some cases. So thanks for that. :)

>This has very, very little bearing on Symphony of the Sword, of >course, but I do know what I'm gonna be reading about for the next >couple days. It's an interesting legal black hole in some cases. So >thanks for that. :)

Live to serve. Try not to think about how much more complicated than that it must be in the 25th century, what with all those other species and whatnot...

Also, I've been meaning to ask:

>-Merc >Keep Rat

... as opposed to, say, a moat rat, or an outer curtain wall rat, or maybe a barbican rat?

--G.actually, Mercutio and the Barbican Rats would be a good band name-><-Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum ModEyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/zgryphon at that email service Google hasCeterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Okay, this explanation is a bit on the long side, and I apologize in advance if I end up boring you with extraneous information. It's yet another trip down "Fanfiction Writers of the 1990s" memory lane. The short version is that being a Keep Rat is a bit like being a (real-life) Wedge Rat.

The long version... back in the day, circa 1997 or so, there was GhostMUX, and after the Fall of GhostMUX, there was (and is) KawaiiMUCK. Within these multi-user dungeon environments, some enterprising person had re-created the Keep of the Four Worlds, of Chronicles of Amber fame, complete with Jasra the Hatrack, the Font of Power, Trump cards, and all kinds of other nifty doodads and secrets and toys.

A lot of the people who congregated there were fanfic writers, and Dan Root set up a www.thekeep.org domain to provide emails and websites for them. Some fairly big names were there; Alan Harnum and John Walter Biles are probably the two most well-remembered (our own Bob Shroeck curates their work on TV tropes to a large extent) but there were others; Mike Loader, Susan Doenime, Rod Malapitan, Jeff Hosmer. And those of us who never wrote much ourselves but were involved in other ways, such as myself.

After awhile, people started noticing all these different authors had the same email domains and were hosted on the same site. Questions were asked. (Well, more like crazy people on the FFML accused us of being part of a conspiracy of Big Name Authors who controlled fandom.) Mike Loader decided to run with it (Mike sort of likes messing with people) and adopted the moniker "Keep Rats" as a catchall identifier, since when he was at the Goethe Institut over in Germany he and his buddies there had been "the Institut Rats." And there was a lot of messing with people with fake-Illuminate antics done under that name. :)

It isn't used much as a moniker these days; the Keep is basically a place for us to chat and play RPGs rather than be used as an actual MU*. But we're still around. Phil Moyer is a Keep Rat, in fact; he's been logging in over there on a nightly basis with us for over ten years now. When he cross-posts something interesting into your own chat, such as Rod buying a classic model Mosin-Nagant rifle or, er, me having long thoughts about the presentation of Omega-class weapons in Shepard's 11, that's where it comes from; the Keep.

So that's the LONG explanation. :)

>actually, Mercutio and the Barbican Rats would be a good band >name

This goes on my list of fake band names, right above "Right Band of Destruction."

>accused us of >being part of a conspiracy of Big Name Authors who controlled fandom.)

Oh, man, the Conspiracy to Control {uncontrollable_thing} paranoia. That's always a favorite of mine.

Back at WPI in the early '90s, people sometimes accused GweepCo of being a shadowy cabal which controlled the people who ran the school's computer systems (particularly the Encore Multimax system that was used for all the "social computing" stuff at the time). Those people, who were for the most part Actual Grown-Ups running that stuff as a Real Job, were alternately bemused and insulted by the assumption, particularly when gweeps played along with it for ironic purposes. At one point AEJ, the Man In Charge of the Campus Computing Center's systems, quipped on one of the WPI internal newsgroups to the effect of, "You guys think you're the KGB of the Encore or something." We liked "KGB of the Encore" so much we used it as the slogan on the T-shirts we had made that year. I still have mine someplace. We especially liked it after the Soviet Union fell and the Encore was decommissioned, such that neither of the nouns meant anything any more.

>that's where it comes from; the Keep.

Oh, that explains the weird framing text. I never mudded much - I flunked out of WPI honestly, without resort to drugs. :)

>>(Well, more like crazy people on the FFML>... but you repeat yourself...

<snrk> Not all of us were crazy. Some of us were the audience watching the crazies and munching popcorn.

-- Bob("So who are these Knights of the True Fiancee that Metroanime is ranting about?" "Haven't the foggiest, but hell if it isn't fun to read.")-------------------My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

>(our own Bob Shroeck curates their work on TV tropes to a large extent

Sadly, not for more than a year now. In May 2012 I had a falling out with the management of TVTropes over the acceptability of random censorship of stuff they didn't like. I no longer visit the site for any purpose whatsoever.

That said, I didn't realize you were that Mercutio and that the "keep" in your sig referred to thekeep.org. Hail and well met, fellow dinosaur of the anime fanfic age.

-- Bob(Say, is Susan ever going to finish PastPresent? If not, does she have notes she'd be willing to part with for money or chocolate?)-------------------My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

>Sadly, not for more than a year now. In May 2012 I had a falling out >with the management of TVTropes over the acceptability of random >censorship of stuff they didn't like. I no longer visit the site for >any purpose whatsoever.

Well, that's a damn shame. The work you were doing there was excellent. The historicity of anime fandom in the 90s is something that's largely preserved as a matter of oral record and you were nailing a lot of it down.

>That said, I didn't realize you were that Mercutio

I'm flattered you remember someone whose main claim to fame was being a great big loudmouth on a mailing list and writing a lot of MST3Ks.

>(Say, is Susan ever going to finish PastPresent? If not, does >she have notes she'd be willing to part with for money or chocolate?)

I can tell you definitively that, sadly, PastPresent is dead, Jim; there's no chance there's going to be a many-years-later resurrection, Hearts of Ice style.

I'll ask Susan if she can see her way to clear to releasing the capsule summary of what was going to happen. I'll send you a private message, if that's cool?

>Well, that's a damn shame. The work you were doing there was >excellent. The historicity of anime fandom in the 90s is something >that's largely preserved as a matter of oral record and you were >nailing a lot of it down.

Thank you, I was rather proud of my work there, although I did worry that I was misremembering things from time to time.

>>That said, I didn't realize you were that Mercutio>I'm flattered you remember someone whose main claim to fame was being >a great big loudmouth on a mailing list and writing a lot of MST3Ks.

Heh.

>>(Say, is Susan ever going to finish PastPresent? If not, does >>she have notes she'd be willing to part with for money or chocolate?) >I'll ask Susan if she can see her way to clear to releasing the >capsule summary of what was going to happen. I'll send you a private >message, if that's cool?

That would be great. Thank you.

-- Bob-------------------My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

>Also, I thought Heather McClellan went to DSM, not Tenjou Academy? >Could be wrong, it's been a while.

She did; she graduated a year after Kaitlyn. She's in college now. The last Kate knew, she'd gone to Hotohori U on Tomodachi, not Tenjou Academy's University Division, but people do transfer from time to time.

It's oddly exciting, planning for such a long-established character's first actual lines. :)

>Not to mention we may actually get some idea of what she even looks >like. =) But I'd also be interested in finding out how commonly people >go to Cephiro now--it's still not common knowledge it exists.